Dog Exhibition Gives Owners a Chance to Fetch Some Glory

Diana Geerling dashes the caricature of dog owners who resemble their pets.

She breeds 20-pound pugs and 140-pound Rottweilers, but even casual observers find it easy to tell them all apart. Geerling is tall and wears her auburn hair in casual curls. The pugs are small and tan, with deep folds of flesh around their pushed-in snouts. The Rottweilers are, well, enormous.

“Nobody can look at a pug and not laugh and want to pet it,” Geerling explained. “Very few people want to stop and play with a Rottweiler.”

Geerling, a veteran breeder from Riverside, was one of hundreds of owners and handlers who presented their dogs Sunday at an all-breed show and obedience trial at the Orange County Fairgrounds. The show, held by the Shoreline Dog Fanciers Assn. of Orange County, drew nearly 2,000 dogs and 120 breeds ranging from Afghan hounds to manicured poodles to rare Rhodesian Ridgebacks.

Serious Competition

“This is what I do to relax,” Geerling said of the weekend show, where her dogs collected half a dozen ribbons. “It’s serious competition, but it’s also fun. I’ve been doing it for 14 years, and I’ve made a lot of close friends along the way.”

Like Geerling, most owners and handlers at Sunday’s show started with a pedigreed house pet and soon succumbed to the competitive spotlight.

“It starts out as a hobby for most people,” said Freeman Claus, chairman of Sunday’s show and a breeder of Norwegian elkhounds. “You get a family pet and you are drawn to the competition. The owners here today were at another show last weekend, and they’ll go to a different one next week.

“It’s an ego trip,” said Claus, of Tustin. “There’s no money in it.”

That may be true for owners, but not for handlers, said Joe Waterman. The professional handler gave up a job as an aerospace engineer in 1968 and has been criss-crossing the country with champion dogs ever since.

“I equaled my salary in aerospace my first year showing dogs,” said Waterman, of Temple City in Los Angeles County. “Now I’ve been in the business long enough that I get to select the best dogs.”

Waterman, who had returned Saturday from a seven-show tour in Florida, did some last-minute grooming of an up-an-coming Bichon Frise as he spoke. Wisps of white fluff whirled around him as he snipped with the sure hand of a surgeon. The seasoned dog stood still as a statue.

“It’s basically a beauty contest,” said Waterman, who brought 16 dogs to Sunday’s show. “It’s one dog compared to another based on the breed standard and the judge’s interpretation. You go where the judging is good.”

Waterman and his wife, Pauline, planned to go from the Orange County show to Oregon next week, then to New York and Chicago in February.

“The dogs live with me while I’m showing them, and they get to be more than a companion or a pet,” Waterman said. “We work as a team. It’s a business relationship between them and I.”

Some dogs seem born for the ring, and others never grow to enjoy the show circuit, said Lynn Brown, a breeder from Long Beach. Brown, who wore an apron with a print of her stout, black Belgian schipperke on it, combed her champion Dazzle.

“It makes a difference to me if we win today,” Brown said. “But he doesn’t care. He’s just out for a good time. All the dogs I show think it’s fun, and if they don’t you may as well not bring them.”

For many, the atmosphere takes some getting used to. High-pitched yips and low, rumbling barks provide the background for ferocious competition. And, of course, there are plenty of suspicious puddles to avoid.

Phil Whitten and his wife, Judy, brought their youngest dog, an Irish setter called Bucky, to the show to ease him into the ring. They drove 8 hours from Sonora in Northern California.

“He’s just a baby,” said Phil Whitten, who fought to discourage the gangly 10-month-old dog from climbing into his lap. “This is the sixth show we’ve brought him to, just to teach him.”

Bucky, whose full name is Rebellion’s Rimrock Winds, has a pedigree to live up to.

“It’s our hope that someday he’ll be a big-time show dog like his daddy,” a champion, Whitten said.

Other dogs, however, were quite literally on the prowl.

Fergie, a mottled bulldog named for the English duchess, sported a leather outfit complete with a Harley Davidson motorcycle cap cut to accommodate her ears. She was modeling the ensemble for a novelty pet wear company and searching for a mate.

“We’re looking for a male to breed her with,” said owner Nadine Redd of Costa Mesa. “We figured in this get-up, she’d catch someone’s eye.”